WHITEPAPER 5 Reasons HR Professionals Are Adopting SaaS Image Filtering

Transcription

1 WHITEPAPER 5 Reasons HR Professionals Are Adopting SaaS Image Filtering Litigation for sexual harassment resulting from inappropriate exposure to pornography can have a massive impact on brands, and apart from embarrassment within the industry, can endanger supply contracts with multinationals or government bodies that have anti-harassment policies. Trevor Choy Choy Lawyers Leading Intellectual Property Law Firm Protection / Productivity / Profit

2 CONTENTS Introduction 2 Why Adopt Image Filtering? 2 1. Mitigate Legal Risk Exposure 2 2. Monitor AUP Compliance 2 3. Reduce Burden on Network Infrastructure 3 4. Protect Your Brand 3 5. Educate Your Staff 3 Why SaaS? 3 Why Choose ImageGuard? 4 Summary 4 Further Information 4

3 INTRODUCTION With now comprising around 75% of business communications, and staff personal use of internet generally accepted, the sending, receiving and forwarding of s and attachments is very easy. The growth and speed of internet adoption in the work place has created a number of significant challenges for organisations, particularly for Human Resource management. It raises a serious issue: how to mitigate the legal and OHS risk and protect the business and staff from illicit images and pornography in traffic? Staff may not have requested these images be sent to them, and may well be completely innocent recipients. But others may send, forward and store such images on a business network, exposing the business to serious consequences. Most businesses have an Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP) in place to educate staff on what is deemed appropriate usage of company . However, having the management tools in place capable of monitoring compliance with the AUP, is less common. Such a tool not only allows compliance monitoring, but the management information delivered can be used to help educate and reinforce staff on what is and is not acceptable. WHY ADOPT IMAGE FILTERING? There are the five sound reasons why HR managers should filter and analyse the results of suspect images in an organisation s traffic: 1. Mitigate legal risk exposure 2. Monitor AUP compliance 3. Reduce burden on network infrastructure 4. Protect your brand 5. Educate your staff MITIGATE LEGAL RISK EXPOSURE It s not only productivity and reputations that suffer when pornography is downloaded, distributed and viewed in the workplace. Offended staff members are entitled to take legal action if the issue isn t dealt with properly. And, once lawyers are involved, regardless of the outcome, you will definitely have lost time, lost productivity and incurred unnecessary costs. Litigation for sexual harassment resulting from inappropriate exposure to pornography can have a massive impact on brands, and apart from embarrassment within the industry, can endanger supply contracts with multinationals or government bodies that have anti-harassment policies. Trevor Choy Choy Lawyers Leading Intellectual Property Law Firm

4 MONITOR AUP COMPLIANCE Having a written policy on pornography in the workplace, whilst important, is not enough in the view of the Australian Human Rights Commission. To avoid vicarious liability in sexual harassment claims, a business must be able to demonstrate it has the systems in place that assist in monitoring compliance with such a policy. REDUCE BURDEN ON NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE Once staff are aware of their responsibilities, and more importantly, realise there are systems in place to monitor activity, any traffic in pornographic or other illicit images drops away sharply. As a result, internet bandwidth is used for its intended purpose - helping your business run smoothly. Equally important, reduced traffic with porn removed means less archiving headaches. Not only is the cost of storage reduced with lower volume to worry about, but those little legal time bombs will no longer be sitting somewhere in the archives. PROTECT YOUR BRAND For business today, being linked to pornography can be a serious blow to its reputation that can take years to rectify. It will not only affect the public s perception of your organisation, but will make it more difficult to recruit quality staff and retain your clients trust. Your brand is a vital asset, and it s vital to ensure it is protected. With over 40 years HR experience in global businesses, including Fortune 100, I regard ImageGuard as a mandatory tool to ensure employees are using company resources appropriately and within its acceptable usage policy. It also assists in minimising the risk of potential legal claims and having to discipline employees for inappropriate usage by filtering out potentially damaging, pornographic material. Ross Eastham Eastham Associates EDUCATE YOUR STAFF Image filter reporting can provide a valuable management tool to identify members of staff that are not adhering to company policy. This in turn means staff can be counselled at an early stage about what is appropriate, allowing managers to deal with any issues before they become a major problem. Your staff will also develop awareness that their actions have consequences. WHY CHOOSE SaaS? Software as a Service (or SaaS) is a method of delivering software applications over the Internet as a service. Rather than having to install and maintain software on your own computer or network,

5 SaaS allows you to access whatever software you may need remotely. Put simply, the most relevant version of the software resides on a server that you access via the Internet. For many businesses this reduces the very significant time and cost associated with managing a complex hardware and software network. The responsibility for managing upgrades or patches rests with your SaaS provider. No installation is required to make an application available to another staff member. And no matter where you are, if you can access the internet, you have access to the software you need. So here are five more sound reasons to choose SaaS: No initial outlay Service is immediately active More certain costs, funded through OpEx not CapEx No network interruptions for installation or upgrades Access, wherever you are. WHY CHOOSE IMAGEGUARD? ImageGuard is a SaaS-based image filtering solution. It works by checking all incoming and outgoing s for suspect images. It ranks images on probability of risk and generates reports about the sender, recipient, date and time. ImageGuard offers protection for your business and your brand, reinforcing that staff know what is expected of them. It is a management tool that shows your organisation is serious about a serious issue. SUMMARY Any association with pornography can have serious ramifications for business. The effects can range from wasted time disciplining staff, unnecessary recruitment costs due to dismissals, lost productivity, lost revenue through network overload right through to lost revenue as a result of losing customer trust. ImageGuard can help you protect your people, your business and your good name. Having an Image Filtering system like ImageGuard in place demonstrates that you take this issue seriously. And it constitutes a very good defence in the event there is a problem. Courts, and the community, have much more sympathy for a business that has a solid system in place to protect, educate and enforce its policies. FURTHER INFORMATION For more information, please click here to request a 30-day free trial of ImageGuard service. Organisations considering image filtering may also be interested in our SaaS-based web browsing filter and reporting service WebGuard. To receive more information about WebGuard, click here.